President Donald Trump voiced his growing frustration with NATO on Monday, just two days before he’s slated to host Secretary General Mark Rutte at the White House, and suggested he might decline to defend the alliance from Russia.
“The numbers that we spend are so crazy on NATO, and they weren’t there for us,” he stated, noting that U.S. support will “protect them from Russia.”
“We spend all of this money, and then when we want to, maybe, have help on small stuff — this is small time. This is not the big one,” the president said. “This is small potatoes — they say ‘No, we’d rather not help.’ It’s a stupid thing to say, because we can say that to them if we want, and we might.”
The president met with a number of NATO leaders at the G7 summit in France last week, where tension regarding Europe’s participation in the war with Iran spilled out into the public light.
Trump recently ordered a review of American troop deployments to Europe — a subject that will likely be top of mind at next month’s NATO summit in Turkey — and he suggested on Monday while speaking with reporters at the White House that he is seriously considering the alliance’s worth.
War Secretary Pete Hegseth formally announced a six-month review last Thursday at a NATO defense ministers meeting in Brussels, Belgium.
“As President Trump put it and rightfully so, he gave our allies a test, to support America when we ask for their help, and too many failed it. The United States has defended Europe for generations,” Hegseth said at the time, “and all the president said was our jets would need to take off from bases in Europe or our ships from ports to strike targets in the Middle East. But too many of our allies said no or tried to down us in arcane legal debates or criticized us publicly for doing what they aren’t prepared or able to do themselves. It was shameful.”
TRUMP DENIES THAT IRAN HOLDS ECONOMIC LEVERAGE OVER US
You can watch Trump’s comments in full below.